Rewards. Immediately the idea seems positive, right? But it can be a mixed bag. What if the reward comes for a poor practice or habit? What does it reinforce then? In other ways, though, a reward can be wonderful. Hard work can pay off and that’s almost always a good thing—right?
For Jim Adkins, frontman and principal songwriter for the acclaimed rock group Jimmy Eat World, the concept of a reward has been both life-changing and at times fraught. When his band rose to immense popularity in the early 2000s with their song, “The Middle,” they reaped the rewards. Heck, the song itself was even about the thought: Just try your best, Try everything you can… It just takes some time… Everything, everything’ll be just fine. Those are the lines Adkins sings, the lines that helped propel his Mesa, Arizona-born group, which was started in high school amongst friends, to world fame. Rewards. But life is hard, curious, and rife with unknown futures. Sometimes the rewards can rain down and hit strangely. Since its early days, though, the band has worked through its ups and downs (like any group, really) and these days they have a new single out, “Something Loud,” that fans crave.
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“There’s something just satisfying and rewarding in a way [with music] that I haven’t experienced in anything else,” Adkins tells American Songwriter. “When you can make something that started out as an idea or a feeling or a thought and have it become this thing that’s beyond your expectations, beyond your imagination—it’s yours. It came from you. But it also came from somewhere else that is mystifying.”
When asked about his early days learning and discovering music, Adkins talks about free throws. It’s the shot in basketball where you stand at a line, do a little routine, and shoot for a point. Some kids growing up, he says, have the ability to get lost in the act and practice it for two, four, six hours. Hard work, dedication, reward—swish! Early on, his parents put him in piano lessons around second grade. They stuck, to a degree. He “got a sense of the reward” back then. He got in the zone, making incremental progress. It wasn’t long after that that he discovered MTV and playing the guitar. His father played a six-string and kept one around the house and Adkins would strum it for hours.
“I haven’t stopped,” he says.
Today, he’s a skilled songwriter, singer, and excellent lead guitar player, too. Hard work, yes, pays off. He can push things, he says, as well as lose himself in practicing a given riff or strumming style, almost waking up out of it and realizing hours have passed. He would come home from school in junior high and high school and strum into the night. He improved. This led to the formation of the band in its initial stages. They formed in high school (officially in 1993), all the original members from the same public school system. Though there was little to no musical or entertainment infrastructure around Mesa and Phoenix where they grew up and where they worked. Incrementally. They didn’t mind sleeping on floors, their heads by toilets in some punk house with a funky nickname. You just had to figure out each step, Adkins says.
“It was basically us and our friends trying to put together punk rock shows wherever we could,” he says. “I think that sort of weeds out people doing it for some kind of unrealistic agenda. You learn to find the reward in the work itself. And you really don’t sweat the things that are out of your control.”
That is the type of realization that creates the foundation for a long career, Adkins explains. It’s not about chasing approval, it’s about getting better (sometimes slowly) and bringing people along with you. You can’t plan for a pop hit that leads to “world domination,” but you can work on a given verse today. And the improvement is its own reward. One step at a time, one day at a time. Maybe it will all pay off. But if not, it’s about the journey, isn’t it? It’s about the work. If it’s honest and good it will find its listeners and fans. For Jimmy Eat World, of course, it led to massive success. Their biggest hit “The Middle” has since been covered by Prince and Taylor Swift. Is there any higher praise?
“I still have no idea how it happened,” Adkins says, with a laugh. “We were really fortunate that we had the right mindset, and we were willing to work really hard. Fortunate to be at the happy intersection where opportunity meets preparation. And young enough that we didn’t care about sleeping on floors.”
The band continued its success, from “The Middle” to releasing now a total of 10 albums (their latest is Surviving in 2019). To sustain momentum and the band’s career, they “just tried to apply what we learned in the punk scene,” Adkins says. One of the keys, he adds, was taking what they did seriously but not themselves. There was and is pride in the work, but not a sense of self-seriousness. Truly, the band is not comprised of divas. But one of the pitfalls of toiling in rock ‘n’ roll is the constant supply of drugs and alcohol everywhere. Rewards. Adkins says that it’s “no accident” that the industry is “riddled” with alcoholism and addiction. It’s something he’s struggled with in the past, too.
“I guess,” he says, “it’s a very similar thing with the reward, that reward of small incremental progress. Getting better, discovering something on your own…. Or the mindset of alcoholism, it’s kind of similar in that way. The way the reward system is structured with your brain.”
Some may be more predisposed to addiction than others. But in the same way that music offers lost souls a way to fit in and belong within a community, alcohol can do it, too. In the same way, a new song you wrote and recorded can give you a thrill, and so can a shot of whiskey. Both can take you away, so to speak. And very quickly, both can create new worlds in an instant. Rewards. It’s no wonder they’re often linked so closely. The pseudo light at the end of the tunnel.
“The escape from yourself,” Adkins says.
But, as Adkins sings in “The Middle,” it just takes some time. Learning. Improvement. New rewards. As one gets older, one can change the reward system. A night in looks a lot better at times when you’re 40 than when you’re 22. Spouses help. New manners of self-confidence help. That’s, in many ways, where Adkins and the band are today. Their new single, “Something Loud,” was born out of a sense of contemporary fun. They wrote a song they simply wanted to play over and over again. It wasn’t for financial gain, necessarily. It was for the joy of togetherness—and that feeling comes across in the brilliant gang vocals on the track’s chorus.
Today, Adkins says, the band is still thinking about gratitude. For making it this long. For new and old opportunities. In 2021, the band played Lollapalooza. Looking ahead, they have a giant tour coming up from August through October. They’ve been a popular band for the entirety of their adult lives—literally since 18-years-old. While there may be regrets or paths not taken, that’s not the point. The point is the newfound rewards that lives lived now illuminate.
“The branding of experience,” Adkins says. “There’s nothing else in art that can do what music does in branding itself to life experience. It’s something we’re proud of.”
Photo by Jimi Giannatti / Courtesy Kellee Mack PR